Why UNRWA has to go

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on January 8, 2018 by Vic Rosenthal

 

UNRWA provides healthcare, education and welfare payments for about 5 million people with Palestinian refugee status. It received its mandate to temporarily provide relief for the 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs displaced by the 1948 war from the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 302 of 1949. The resolution notes that

…continued assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability, and that constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief.

The resolution did not set out criteria for eligibility for refugee status. This was apparently decided by UNRWA staff itself. But the criteria were chosen in a way that contradicted the intent of the resolution. Instead of being structured so that the refugees could ultimately be weaned off of the international dole, the definition of a refugee, the actions of the agency and the behavior of the host countries where the refugee camps were located, all operated to create the largest possible refugee population – and a population that would continue to increase without limit.

UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who was displaced after as little as two years residence in Palestine before 1948, it made refugee status hereditary without a limitation on the number of generations, and it paid welfare benefits according to family size. These conditions ensured the continued increase of a dependent population. Today there are about 5 million people with Palestinian refugee status: refugees, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Not only have there been more and more refugees created, their quality of life has been poor. The host countries (Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Jordan, Palestinian Authority) restricted the mobility of the refugees, requiring them to live in specified locations, and in some cases limited the occupations that they were permitted to engage in. Refugee camps – today some the size of cities – were deliberately neglected. During the 1970s, Israel attempted to improve the conditions in some of the camps that came under its control, but was prevented from doing so by the PLO. In places where there are restrictions on employment like Lebanon, or places like Gaza where the economy is particularly weak, young men have no options for employment. UNRWA itself is a major employer of refugees; some 97% of its employees are Palestinian. In Gaza, one of the only other options is to join Hamas’ “security forces” or one of the other armed militias.

Unsurprisingly, the UNRWA schools teach hatred of Israel and nurture the Palestinian themes of dispossession and revenge. Its installations in Gaza have been used to store weapons, on the usually correct assumption that the IDF will spare them.

Most people who favor the continued existence of the state of Israel agree that UNRWA is an agency designed to perpetuate the conflict, not to ameliorate it. And yet, Israeli officials – in particular, the IDF – and the most important pro-Israel organizations in the US have always stepped back from deploying the one weapon that could actually force change, which is cutting the hundreds of millions of dollars the US, UNRWA’s largest donor, grants the agency each year. This is because the IDF (AIPAC follows the Israeli government’s lead, which in turn follows the IDF’s) sees the status quo as the least bad of all possible alternatives. If UNRWA went away, who would feed, educate and take care of 5 million dependent Arabs? Would the IDF itself have to take charge? UNRWA schools teach anti-Zionism, but what would Hamas or Islamic State schools teach? Would the humanitarian condition of the refugees decline even further, and if so, would this bring instability and terrorism?

The IDF and Israeli government have not wanted to step into the unknown, preferring the devil they know to the one they don’t, and the US has followed their lead. But simple Malthusian mathematics proves that this status quo is unsustainable. The US, EU and other donors can’t continue to meet the needs of a geometrically increasing population. And while Israel may feel that continuing to buy off the Palestinians is in her national interest, it is not obvious to the US and others that it is in theirs.
But there is, or should be, a much greater problem from the Israeli point of view. And that is that UNRWA’s very definition is profoundly anti-Israel. It is the embodiment of the Palestinian “right of return,” by virtue of its hereditary definition of “Palestinian refugee.”

The main stumbling block to ending the conflict between Israel and the Arabs (the Palestinians and others) is the claim that the “refugees” are pressing to “return” to “their homes.” This claim is what distinguishes our conflict from countless territorial disputes all over the world. It is what makes the dispute not be over borders, but over the existence of our state.

The Palestinian narrative of dispossession is buttressed by this massive UN enterprise to maintain what is in effect a nation in exile, a nation waiting to burst its bonds and expand into what it sees as its land, driving out its temporary Jewish interlopers. It is not surprising that the Palestinians expect the UN to force Israel to give them everything they ask in negotiations – after all, it has been meeting their physical needs for nearly 70 years.

In order to end the conflict without the destruction of one or both sides, any negotiation has to be reality-based. But thanks to UNRWA and their other allies, the Palestinians have developed fantasies. Two of the subjects of these fantasies are Jerusalem and the “right of return.” The fantastic Palestinian beliefs that they will possess the holy sites in Jerusalem, and that the “refugees” will “return” to Haifa, Yafo, Acco and other places make it impossible to settle the conflict peacefully.
President Trump seems to think, as his State Department does not, that a switch from fantasy to reality may have a positive effect. I think he’s right. In any event, it’s certainly true that indulging Palestinian fantasies has so far been profoundly unproductive.

Although it is not a sufficient condition for an eventual peaceful settlement, it is a necessary one that the Palestinians divest from their fantasies. And the only way to lose the “return” fantasy is to end the concept of a permanent refugee population. If there are no refugees, then there can be no question of  “right of return.” That means that UNRWA and its fundamental principle of hereditary refugee status needs to be ended too, even if the process is somewhat uncomfortable – both for the Palestinians and for Israel. Some way can be found to phase out humanitarian aid slowly, but the ideological principle has to change now.

Possibly the economic facts of life and some of the geostrategic changes in the Middle East that have been gathering steam recently will make it possible for this to happen in the near future. And then, maybe in a few generations, we can think about the possibility of actual peace between the Jews and the Arabs.

The Trump Declaration

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on December 10, 2017 by Vic Rosenthal

Some thoughts on President Trump’s historic (yes, it is) declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel:

1) Some commentators minimize its importance. There seem to be two kinds of minimizers: friendly and unfriendly. Friendly minimizers say things like “the reality is that it’s our capital and nothing anyone can say can change that. So Trump’s declaration doesn’t matter.” The unfriendly ones say “Trump is biased and an Islamophobe, who cares what he says?”

Both of these positions are wrong. To the friendly ones, I say that appearance may not bereality, but it helps create it, especially in politics. Our enemies know this well, which is why they aggressively promulgate ridiculous lies, like insisting that there is no Jewish connection to Jerusalem, that there was no Temple there, or that Palestinian Arabs are descended from Canaanites. Truth is truth, but a curtain of lies can obscure it, and after a while nobody knows the difference.

Trump can’t make Jerusalem our capital – only the people of Israel can do that. But a declaration by the president of what is still the most powerful and richest country in the world carries weight. His statement represents a crack in the truly antisemitic double standard that has been applied to Israel with respect to Jerusalem since 1948.

To our enemies, I say that if it is so unimportant, why are you so upset? Why are Palestinian Arabs rioting and trying to kill Jews with firebombs and rocks, why are we being bombarded with rockets from Gaza, why are Europeans  denouncing it in the UN Security Council, and why is the Turkish president mounting a major diplomatic offensiveto reverse it? Why is there an outbreak of Jew-hatred all over the world? If it doesn’t mean anything, why don’t you just ignore it?

Perhaps calling it the “Trump Declaration” is a bit much. But compare it to the Balfour Declaration. Although it was ultimately embodied in international law, the Balfour Declaration itself was nothing more than a statement of the opinion of a majority of the British Cabinet. Yet both friends and enemies of the Jewish state understood, then and now, its significance.

Since 1948, the international community has held that Jerusalem is too important to be placed in the hands of the Jews it despised, even though only the Jews have ever made the holy places of the three religions accessible to everyone. The Muslims would like to control it for their benefit alone, as was demonstrated during the 19-year Jordanian occupation, marked by triumphalist destruction of Jewish sites.

The post-Christian descendants of barbarian tribes (i.e., the Europeans) seem to think their moral superiority entitles  them to rule over the holy city, whose spiritual power even they admit. But their violent opposition to Trump’s quite moderate declaration illustrates that the rational, social-democratic façade covering their atavistic Jew-hatred is thinner than we thought.

2) The US State Department seems to take the partly-friendly position that “it reflects reality, but there are no practical consequences.” So they have announced that there will be no changes to consular procedures. People born in Jerusalem will continue to have only “Jerusalem” rather than “Jerusalem, Israel” on their passports. The desire to not change anything seems to have led them to the absurd position that they can say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but they cannot admit that the city is in Israel (because then they might have to put it on a passport).

I expect that the State Department will fight tooth and nail to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv. They will try to wait Trump out. Maybe he will only serve one term, they think. He has given them a chance to do the right thing by signing the waiver, in order to let them do what they need to do without time pressure. But if he feels they are not acting in good faith, all he has to do is let the 6-month deadline pass.

3) Both Trump and the State Department stress that while Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, they do not wish to say precisely what Jerusalem is.

In Trump’s words,

We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

For good measure, he added that the status quo at the Temple Mount (which he also referred to as haram al-sharif) should be maintained.

Israel welcomed Trump’s statement, despite the caveat. Even though it implicitly contradicted Israel’s official position that it is sovereign in all of Jerusalem, most Israelis, except the Arabs and the most extreme Jewish parties, applauded.

In April, the Russian Foreign Ministry made a statement similar to Trump’s, except that it distinguished between East and West Jerusalem, presumably according to the 1949 armistice line (the “Green Line”):

We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

But after Trump’s speech, the Ministry announced that it was “seriously concerned.” Since, logically speaking, Trump’s declaration said less than its own statement in April (the Russian statement specified boundaries of sovereignty and Trump’s did not) one wonders what the Russians are “concerned” about.

The Palestinians are also inconsistent. The official Palestinian negotiating position(according to a PA statement of 2006) on Jerusalem is that “East Jerusalem” is occupied territory which should be under Palestinian sovereignty. “West Jerusalem,” according to them, is subject to final status negotiations. This is contradicted by the Russian statement, which unequivocally gives West Jerusalem to Israel, while Trump’s statement is consistent with it! Nevertheless, the Palestinians did not riot in April, nor did the Europeans have fits.

“Trump just destroyed the possibility of two states,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, moments after Trump’s speech. I admit that I am totally at a loss to see how he did that. Maybe someone can explain this to me.

I can’t come to any other conclusion than that much of the reaction is a form of “Trump derangement syndrome.” Trump bent over backwards to make a carefully calibrated, moderate statement that would not prejudge negotiations while still recognizing reality. And yet, the Russians, the Palestinians and Muslim states, and the Europeans (not to mention the Democrats and the Union for Reform Judaism in the US) found it unacceptable.

The problem, apparently, is not what was said but who said it.

Trumping Jerusalem

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on December 8, 2017 by Vic Rosenthal

He did it.

In a very carefully written speech, Donald Trump announced that the US would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel, and that he would begin the process of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The video and transcript of his speech are here.

So is this a big deal or not?

I think it is, although it will depend in part on what happens afterwards.

Do you remember when Arafat recognized the state of Israel as part of the Oslo accords? He and his successor Mahmoud Abbas made it abundantly clear that they “recognized” the state the way I would recognize an alligator lying across the sidewalk in front of me: I can’t pretend that she doesn’t exist, but I don’t believe that she has a right to be there. And I want her removed as soon as possible.

Trump made it clear that it was impossible to continue the pretense that somehow the status of Jerusalem is up in the air:

But today we finally acknowledge the obvious. That Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.

If this were only what he said then the door is open for anyone to take the alligator interpretation. But he also said this:

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this is a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States under President Truman recognized the state of Israel.

Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. [my emphasis]

He didn’t have to add that last sentence. But he did, and it is the most important one in his speech. It refutes the attempts of the PA and their allies at the UN to deny the historic connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. And it supports the legal argument that the Jewish people  are indigenous to the land, and have aboriginal rights to Jerusalem (and by extension, all the land of Israel).

The US State Department has insisted that the status of Jerusalem – all of Jerusalem – must be determined by negotiations between the parties. It held that until then, the various UN resolutions that call for Jerusalem to be an internationally governed corpus separatum are theoretically operative. It has been a source of derision for years that the State Department refused to say what country Jerusalem is in. Trump has finally put an end to this silliness .

Nevertheless, Trump did not refer to a “unified” Jerusalem, and he emphasized that the boundaries of Israeli (and presumably, Palestinian) sovereignty in Jerusalem will be determined by future negotiations. For the first time, he referred to a “two-state solution,” although he added “if agreed to by both sides.” In other words, he opposes the idea of an imposed solution.

He also did not mention “pre-1967 lines,” nor did he say anything about  East or West Jerusalem.  It’s been Israel’s position – and also that of the Arab signers of the 1949 cease-fire agreement – that the armistice line (the “Green Line”) has no political significance, and is in no sense a “border.” Indeed, this is implied by UNSC resolution 242, the basis for all subsequent “peace processing,” when it calls for “secure and recognized boundaries:” the understanding is that the Green Line is neither secure nor recognized by either side.

The introduction of “pre-1967 lines” as the “basis” of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement in Barack Obama’s 2011 peace proposal was particularly objectionable for this reason.  The concept of “land swaps,” by which the Palestinians would receive land west of the line in compensation for land in settlement blocs that would become part of Israel is also problematic, because it implies that all of the land east of the line “belongs” to the Arabs ; otherwise, why should they get something in return for it?

Trump’s announcement that he has directed the State Department to begin the process of moving the embassy is welcome, but since he has signed the waiver to give him another six months, it essentially adds nothing to the promises that he has already made. He did not mention the waiver in his speech.

Naturally, the threats from those who believe there should be no Jewish state – because that is what it means to say that Jerusalem is not part of it – are flowing in as predictably as the tide. There will be Palestinian “days of rage” which will result in disturbances and possibly terrorism here. Turkish President Erdoğan has threatened to break relations with Israel, a stupid move which will get him nothing. Arab and European leaders have also objected, claiming that it will damage the nonexistent and impossible “peace process.” However, the consensus is that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf states as well as Egypt won’t go any farther than harsh words.

The best thing that could happen would be if other nations followed the US. Agreement or at least acquiescence by Saudi Arabia or Egypt – a crack in the anti-Israel wall built by the Arabs with their famous “three no’s” issued at the Khartoum summit in 1967 – would be fabulous, but probably Israel will have to settle for something less. Jordan’s ungrateful little King Abdullah, who seems to think that Moshe Dayan’s foolish decision to leave the Jordanian waqf in control of the Temple Mount granted him sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, is expected to splutter, and this perhaps will slow the resumption of normal relations with Israel, which were disrupted by the recent incident in which an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanians after one of them tried to stab him.

Western Europe will continue in its hostility. In my opinion, attitudes there have gone beyond sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs, and they are deep into antisemitism.

The world isn’t what it was in 1990 or even 2000. The US is not the major player in the Middle East any more, and relations between the regional powers may be more important than the influence of Washington. Russia’s clout here is growing as well. Although Russia has recently expressed concern that US actions might damage relations between Israel and the Palestinians, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in April that, while continuing to call for a Palestinian state with a capital in eastern Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s claim to its own capital in the western part of the city.

I think it’s worth emphasizing the surreal nature of this issue. Israel controls Jerusalem. As Trump noted, the President of Israel and her Prime Minister live in Jerusalem, her Knesset and cabinet meet in Jerusalem, her ministries have offices in Jerusalem. It has been thus since Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel was reestablished after thousands of years of exile. No other nation has made Jerusalem its capital city since the Jebusites lost it to King David’s army around 1000 BCE.

Israel, as in so many other areas, gets “special treatment” on this question by the international community. Every other country is permitted to designate its own capital. Despite the fact that the indigenous population was rudely displaced by the construction of a new capital city, Brasilia, in 1960, nobody has claimed that the capital of Brazil is still Rio de Janeiro or has kept their embassy there.

And yet, successive American presidents have refused to recognize the simple fact that Jerusalem is our capital. Several have promised to do so, but until Donald Trump, none has kept his promise. Yesterday, this man – who is so fiercely criticized in his own country – became a hero to millions of Israelis from almost all political factions.

Islam is not a religion

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on July 17, 2016 by Vic Rosenthal

Today in a 647-word editorial the New York Times has strikingly exemplified the West’s misunderstanding of and impotent response to the threat posed to it by a resurgent, expansionist Islam:

Each new attack, each new convulsion of fear, horror, grief and anger is a progressively greater test of enlightened civilization’s commitment to its core values. …

But whoever struck the blow, whatever its malevolent purpose or toll, the response cannot be to abandon the respect for human rights, equality, reason and tolerance that is the aspiration of all democratic cultures. Though it has become almost a cliché to argue that the goal of terrorists is to bring their victims down to their moral level, it is also a truth, and it must be reaffirmed after every attack.

First, the misunderstanding. The perpetrators of these murderous attacks can’t be “trying to bring us down to their moral level,” because they believe they are on a higher moral level than we are. They are not trying to make us give up our moral principles, which they think are stupid anyway. Rather, they are trying to demoralize us, to terrorize us, to paralyze us so that we will not strike back. To create chaos. To make us see how powerful they are. To make us appease them. To make us submit.

The editors of the Times would have us stress ‘tolerance’, according to the perception that Islam is a religion like any of the attenuated religions with which we are familiar, a sort of liberal Protestantism or Reform Judaism where they go to mosque on Friday. And if this were a correct characterization of Islam they would be right. But Islam is not a religion in that sense. It is a religion-based ideology, and two of its fundamental principles are that Islam must a) spread throughout the world, and b) become politically dominant wherever Muslims live.

Marxism-Leninism and Nazism were also expansionist ideologies that had a hold on large numbers of people, although without involving religion. The religious basis of Islam only makes it much more effective in gaining and keeping adherents, a task at which it is unmatched. The collection of ideas that make up the Islamic ideology has possibly been the single most effective ‘memeplex’ in human history.

The wave of Islamic conquest that began in the 7^th century was a straightforward military campaign. Defeat the infidels’ armies, kill their leaders, enslave or convert the population to Islam, impose shari’a (Islamic law), and move on to the next conquest.

Today the balance of military power is such that the infidels can’t be confronted head-on. But the jihadists understand the weaknesses inherent in Western societies. They believe that they can be cracked into pieces over time by terrorism and taken over by subversion. And the Western leadership often plays directly into their hands

For example, there is no recognition on the part of Western elites that Islam is anything more than a ‘religion’ in the most trivial sense; and therefore it would violate our ideal of freedom of religion to interfere with it in any way. So, although they admit that there is such a thing as ‘radical Islamism’ which engages in terrorism, it is considered wholly separate and distinct from ordinary Islam, which is peaceful and harmless.

They refuse to see that the ideology that is Islam is pervasive; the difference is just that for whatever reason – temperament, practical considerations, degree of commitment – ‘moderate’ Muslims do not engage in violent activities. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of support in the overall Muslim community for extremists, who are often seen as ‘more devout’, better Muslims because of their zeal.

Religion in the West is exempt from criticism, and in the US it receives exemption from taxation as well. Ideology and politics are not so protected. It isn’t considered bigotry to oppose Marxism or Republicanism, and political contributions can’t be deducted from income on American tax returns. The problem is that the pernicious political ideology of Islam rides along with its religious underpinnings.

Criticism of Islam is systematically suppressed by being called ‘hate’, ‘bigotry’ or even ‘racism’. Organizations like the ADL or the Southern Poverty Law Center see ‘Islamophobia’ as a form of ‘hate’, along with anti-black racism or Jew-hatred. Although it should be obvious that one can be opposed to the ideology inherent in Islam without hating Muslims, and certainly without being a racist, this distinction is never drawn.

Because it ignores the ideological nature of Islam, the West does really stupid things. For example, the US allows foreign interests in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Iran to pump huge amounts of money into mosques and Islamic centers in America. These institutions teach both the religion and the ideology – they are inseparable – convert Americans to Islam, engage in ‘educational’ enterprises in their communities, support friendly politicians, squelch criticism of Islam, and so forth. And of course they pay no taxes.

Foreign money also goes into educational institutions, endowing Middle East Studies departments that are little more than mouthpieces for pro-Islamic propaganda, giving grants to academics for helpful  research, and – to a shocking degree – influencing the content of textbooks used by American grade school and high school students.

In what must rank as one of the most foolish acts in history since that Greek horse was allowed to enter Troy, US prisons provide taxpayer-funded Muslim chaplains who teach Islam, organize worship services and help inmates convert to Islam. Thus some of the most violent elements in society are indoctrinated with an ideology that lends itself to violent extremism!

So what should the Western response to Islamic terrorism be?

• First and most important, we must recognize that Islam is not merely a religion that should be given the benefit of ‘tolerance’. It is an ideology that is opposed to the basic principles of the democratic, enlightened West, and should be treated as an enemy.
• We should stop shutting down criticism of Islam, an ideology, on the grounds that such criticism is the same as irrational hatred of a person because of his ethnicity or race. Criticism of ideologies is entirely legitimate.
• We should treat Islamic institutions as (anti-Western) political institutions, not religious ones.
• We should understand that foreign money supporting Islamic causes in a Western country constitutes subversion, and take steps to control it.
  
• We should ensure that the history and philosophy of Islam as an expansionist ideology is taught in schools in an honest way (e.g., the primary meaning of ‘jihad’ is not ‘an inner struggle against evil’).
• We should monitor Islamic institutions for subversive activities.
• We should not encourage immigration of Muslims to the West.
• We should eliminate Muslim chaplains in prisons.

The Times concludes thus:

What threatened nations and their leaders can do is to firmly instill the idea that the only sure defense is to stay true to what democratic societies really stand for.

What the editors of the Times intend, of course, is that the West should not allow Islamic provocations to cause us to treat Muslims any differently than anyone else. And they are correct that we should always protect human rights.

But it is not a human right in the West to espouse an ideology that embraces conquest and destruction of Western civilization. Such an ideology contradicts “what democratic societies really stand for,” and tolerance for it is no more justified than tolerance for smallpox or polio. It is suicidal.

Is the Unbreakable Bond an abusive relationship?

From Fresno Zionism

News item:

The US Embassy has excluded Ariel University, located in the West Bank [Samaria - ed.], from the invitation list for President Barack Obama’s speech to Israeli students during his visit next week.

According to student union representatives, the embassy contacted the other seven accredited Israeli universities, all of which are located within the pre-1967 lines, but not the sole Israeli university located in the West Bank.

Ariel University Student Union head Shay Shahaf said he hoped the omission was an error that can be corrected rather than a political statement with respect to their location.

He noted that his school became Israel’s eighth accredited university in December and that there still might be confusion over its students’ status.

Shahaf is being polite. Don’t hold your breath for a correction — this is the State Department that can only mumble when asked what the capital of the state of Israel is.

Which brings us to this:

U.S. President Barack Obama has decided not to address the Knesset during his visit to Israel next week. Senior U.S. officials said that, after long deliberations and discussions, the White House decided that the president will address students from universities in Israel at the ICC (Binyaney Ha’uma) in Jerusalem.

That initial snub did not go unnoticed. The Prime Minister’s Office and a number of Knesset members passed messages to the White House saying they would be much happier if the speech took place in the Knesset. But senior U.S. officials have insisted that Obama decided to deliver his messages directly to the Israeli public, especially the younger generation, not just to politicians in the Knesset.

This is beyond weird. Where else but the Knesset, the seat of the government of Israel, would such an address be appropriate? When Netanyahu came to the US, he spoke in front of Congress, not at, say, Georgetown University.

But you just have to think like a state department official and it becomes clear: the Knesset is the seat of Israel’s government, and the Knesset is located in … Jerusalem! So speaking before the Knesset constitutes de facto recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. That wasn’t hard, was it?

The message sent by these and numerous other incidents is that the US does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state, a state with the power to accredit universities, and to declare that the city which has been the seat of government for the 65 years since its founding is in fact its legitimate capital.

The case of the abused wife with a rich husband who gives her everything she wants except her autonomy is a cliché of fiction, but certainly exists in real life.

When does the Unbreakable Bond become an abusive relationship?

How the usual suspects got it wrong

From Fresno Zionism
 

Yair Lapid, who came in a surprising second in Israel’s election

For the past couple of years, the line pushed hard by the American Jewish anti-Zionist Left — the ones that love Israel so much they want to destroy it in order to save it, Peter Beinart, J Street, Thomas L. Friedman, Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Reform Movement, the New Israel Fund, etc. — has been that American Jews have become distanced from Israel because it has moved sharply to the right, abandoning democracy and liberal values, becoming a racist theocracy.

For example, here’s Friedman in December:

Israel’s friends need to understand that the center-left in Israel is dying. The Israeli election in January will bring to power Israeli rightists who never spoke at your local Israel Bonds dinner. These are people who want to annex the West Bank. Bibi Netanyahu is a dove in this crowd. The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth. [emphasis in original]

And here is Daniel Sokatch of the New Israel fund just a week ago:

If the polls are correct, on January 22, Israelis will elect the most right-wing government in Israeli history. It is likely to be even more hardline than the current coalition, on whose watch Israel’s relations with the Obama administration soured over disagreements over Iran, Israel’s expanding settlement enterprise, and the moribund peace process.

Oops.

How many times do I have to say it? These idiots do not have a clue about what Israelis think, what their priorities are, and of course how they vote.

This election was anything but a victory for the right wing. The Likud, perhaps in part because of the replacement of some relatively moderate members of its list with those farther to the right, ended up with far fewer seats than predicted. Although the new Bayit Hayehudi party — among those, in Friedman’s words, “who want to annex [parts of] the West Bank” — did remarkably well for its first election, it, too did less well than expected.

The big surprise was the second-place finish of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. Centrist, concerned with social issues — including Haredi draft-avoidance — and the cost of apartments and food. So much for theocracy.
Interestingly — at least, it should be interesting to Sokatch, Friedman, Beinart, et al — there was little discussion during the campaign of “the peace process,” “the occupation” and the “two-state solution” with which they are obsessed. Everybody in Israel, with the exception of the European- and NIF-funded Left, knows that the “peace process” is dead because there is simply no common ground between the Israeli need for security and the Arab desire to destroy Israel.

No, the issues uppermost in their minds are Iran — and here, most Israelis have confidence in Netanyahu — and questions of social and economic policy.

In other words, after survival, Israelis are concerned with how best to improve the functioning of their democracy, how to share the burdens and distribute the benefits of their free society — exactly the areas in which the patronizing liberal American Jews think that they know better than the ‘primitive’ Israelis!

Now that they have been proven wrong, will they shut up? Of course not. But they should. As a person who has lived in Israel and the US, who today is close to children and grandchildren living in Israel and therefore can compare the two systems, I can say that I am far more worried about the future of democracy in the USA than in Israel.

Yes, Israel lives in constant threat of war, but most of its people have better access to good health care than Americans do. Yes, the cost of apartments is astronomical, but I am confident that this will shortly change, while the goal of home ownership is moving farther away for many Americans. And our political process…

My advice to Beinart, Friedman, Jacobs, Sokatch and friends is that they should just leave Israel alone — it is dealing with its problems well enough by itself — and concentrate on fixing things here in the US.

Polls and flying pigs

From Fresno Zionism
 

Two new polls are being widely quoted in the media as showing that Israelis — even voters for  right-wing parties — want to make a two-state deal with the Palestinians. For example, Barak Ravid writes in Ha’aretz [subscription],

Two opinion surveys conducted by different Israeli pollsters in December show that most Likud-Beiteinu and the further-right Habayit Hayehudi voters would support a peace agreement establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, Israel’s retention of major settlement blocs and a division of Jerusalem. The two polls also revealed that two thirds of all Israelis support such an agreement…

The Abraham Center commissioned parallel polls from Mina Tzemach’s Dahaf and from pollster Rafi Smith on the Israeli public’s views about peace with the Palestinians. The firms were aware of each other’s polls. Each poll asked one question: If the government of Israel presented a public referendum on a peace agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to be implemented only after the Palestinians held up all the obligations at their end, especially the war on terror, and the United States approved of the agreement, would you support it or not?

The principles of the agreement as presented to respondents were for two states – Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinians, with Palestinian refugees having the right to return only to their new country. The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and its boundaries would be based on the 1967 lines with exchanges of equal-sized territory. Those exchanges would take into consideration Israel’s security needs and would retain the large settlement blocs in Israeli hands…

When it came to the general public, Mina Tzemach’s poll revealed that 67 percent supported such an agreement and 21 percent opposed it, while Rafi Smith’s poll showed 68 percent in favor and 25 percent against. The surveys found that the general public’s support for the agreement rose to 75 percent (Dahaf ) and 80 percent (Rafi Smith ) when augmented by various other “improvements” such as a defense alliance with the United Sates, disarmament of Hamas and an end to its rule in Gaza, and Arab states’ willingness to enact full diplomatic relations with Israel.

Does this mean, as the Left suggests, that it is the intransigence of the Netanyahu government that is holding Israel back from making peace? Does it mean that with a little more pressure from the US, such an agreement is possible?

Of course not. What it means is that Israelis really, really want peace and most would give up territory in return, if peace were attainable by doing so.
The poll question presumes that the PLO state would be demilitarized and the Palestinians would “hold up all their obligations [first].” How demilitarization could be enforced and how the Palestinians could be prevented from violating the agreement — as they have violated almost every agreement they made with Israel since 1993 — are not specified. As for the idea that Hamas would disarm and give up control of Gaza, it’s far more likely that Hamas will end up in control of Judea and Samaria too.

In addition to the practical issues above, the question assumes that the Palestinians would sincerely agree to Israel retaining the settlement blocs, to demilitarization, to abandoning their demand for ‘right of return’, to recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people, etc., when they have consistently rejected these ideas when presented as concrete peace proposals. Polls among Palestinians consistently show that they support violent ‘resistance’ until Israel has been replaced by an Arab state.

An acquaintance called this an “if pigs could fly poll.” There is as little chance of the conditions being fulfilled as there being a porcine airlift, so it has no real-world application, except insofar as it shows that even right-wing Israelis dream of peace. But we knew that.

Yet another recent poll, also conducted by Dr. Mina Tzemach, showed that 83% of Israelis believe that withdrawal to pre-1967 boundaries wouldn’t bring peace. That is why they vote for the Likud and rightward.
So why the flying pigs? The Ha’aretz article linked above helps us understand:

The polls were commissioned by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington D.C. Abraham, who made his fortune with Slim-Fast diet products, is considered a major contributor and close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is also known to be close to President Shimon Peres and to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. However, Abraham has met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on almost every visit to Israel over the past four years.

The Abraham Center is headed by former Congressman Robert Wexler, who is close to President Barack Obama and was very active in the latter’s recent presidential campaign. According to one assessment, Wexler may be appointed to a senior position in the Obama administration in the coming months.

It tells us that the Obama Administration has not given up on its plan to create a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and to divide Jerusalem. Just wait: the poll will be presented as ‘proof’ that the majority of Israelis want it to!

Pollard still in prison after 27 years — an object lesson for Jews?

From Fresno Zionism

Highly redacted CIA document about Jonathan Pollard case. Click for larger version.

I haven’t written about Jonathan Pollard in a while. I’m prompted to do so again by two things: a recent news report that Pollard was taken to the hospital after collapsing in his cell (he is now back in jail), and the release today of formerly classified documents about his case.

Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested for passing classified information to Israel in 1985 and sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment, when the government reneged on a plea deal. The judge in the case ruled after receiving confidential information about the damage that Pollard’s spying allegedly caused from former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

Weinberger’s memo to the court has now been declassified, but unfortunately the content that persuaded the judge to send Pollard to prison for life has been redacted, so we still don’t know exactly what Pollard is supposed to have done that justified his hugely disproportionate sentence. You can read more about the case here.

Some commentators think that Pollard was accused of being the source of information which led to the deaths of American agents at the hands of the Soviet KGB, when in fact this was provided by traitors Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. But this can’t be determined from what’s left of Weinberger’s memo.
One interesting item that appears in the declassified documents are details about some of what Pollard provided:

The documents provided information on PLO headquarters in Tunisia; specific capabilities of Tunisian and Libyan air defense systems; Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare productions capabilities (including detailed satellite imagery); Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states; naval forces, port facilities, and lines of communication of various Middle Eastern and North African countries; the MiG-29 fighter; and Pakistan’s nuclear program. Also included was a U.S. assessment of Israeli military capabilities.

The government has not provided any additional information that makes the reasons for keeping Pollard in prison clear. While he certainly is guilty of transmitting classified information to an ally, his is the only case of this kind that has resulted in a life sentence. I can’t believe, if the government actually has information to justify the sentence, that it could not be provided in a manner that would be convincing without revealing damaging secrets.

There are at least two other possible reasons for not releasing Pollard that come to mind: either

1. he knows something which still, after 27 years, would embarrass the CIA or some other government entity or official; or,
2. the administration believes that it is absolutely necessary to send a message that Jewish disloyalty will be treated with maximum harshness.

I’m going with number 2.

The same old tired nonsense

From Fresno Zionism
 
Because of my business, which involves synagogues, I have accidentally been placed on many synagogue mailing lists. So I get to read about simchas and deaths, holiday parties, trips to Israel, building campaigns, etc. Most of this is uninteresting, relating to people I don’t know in places I haven’t been, but sometimes it’s revealing.

For example, I recently received a copy of a message from a Reform rabbi whom I won’t identify, but whose remarks can be paraphrased as follows:

The recent fighting between Israel and Hamas was terrible. Many innocent people on both sides were hurt. Why do we keep repeating this irrational behavior? Bellicose leaders on both sides are at fault. The only way to end the conflict is a two-state solution, to talk rather than fight.

I’ve left out a great deal, some of which I found so ‘evenhanded’ as to be offensive, as though the rabbi felt that if he criticized Hamas it would only be fair to criticize Israel harshly as well.

I’m sure the rabbi’s congregants expect him to be knowledgeable about Israel and the conflict that has always informed its existence. But he is representative of many Jewish leaders in that, to be as polite as possible, he seems to be talking about the Middle East located in the Upsilon Andromedae system rather
than the one on earth.

He must be unaware of the recent Hamas ‘victory’ celebration where tens of thousands of Gazans cheered Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who said,

Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land … We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take…
We will not rest until we liberate the prisoners. The way we freed some of the prisoners in the past is the way we will use to free the remaining prisoners…
[The right of return to Israel for Arab 'refugees'] is sacred to us and we will not forfeit it…

And apparently he does not understand that Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO declared the Oslo ‘peace process’ null and void by unilaterally turning to the UN for statehood (and he doesn’t grasp that the General Assembly affirmed this denial of the only cooperative road to a two-state solution).

He seems to ignore the multiple times that the PLO rejected Israeli offers of almost the entire area of the 1948-1967 Jordanian conquest. The fact that no Arab leadership has ever given up the so-called ‘right of return’ of the descendents of Arab refugees to Israel — a ‘right’ for which there is no legal or historical precedent — does not dampen his enthusiasm for “two states.”

He doesn’t appear to ask if the hundred-year history of pogroms and terrorism by Arabs against Jews in the land of Israel, along with the vicious anti-Jewish hatred spewed by the Hamas and PLO media and educational systems, their maps that show ‘Palestine’ as including all of Israel, etc. — if all of this might imply that the Palestinians wouldn’t be satisfied even if they obtained pre-1967 boundaries?

Gazan child re-enacts bloody 2000 lynch of Israeli reservists

He doesn’t bring up the fact that the Middle East has become an even more dangerous place than ever before, with a radical Islamist regime rising in Egypt, total chaos possible in Syria and a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. Is this the time for Israel to invite new security threats?

Although the rabbi doesn’t discuss the security issues that would be raised by an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, doesn’t the recent experience of withdrawal from Gaza make him think? Even if an agreement were made with a non-hostile Palestinian entity — although the idea that the PLO is non-hostile in anything other than its English statements is questionable — what would happen if (when) Hamas or hardline PLO factions take over, placing Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion airport, Jerusalem and more in the position of Sderot?

Keep in mind that if it doesn’t work out — if the Palestinians don’t keep their agreement (and they have broken numerous prior agreements) then getting the land back isn’t easy. Israel is expected to make real, concrete concessions in return for promises.

In short, why does the rabbi advise his congregants to ignore the lessons of history as well as everything that the Palestinian leadership says and does, and call for a ‘solution’ that doesn’t solve anything, but only makes the situation much worse?

I won’t even ask why the rabbi, as a Jewish leader, doesn’t even mention the fact that the parts of the land of Israel that would be abandoned in a two-state agreement are those with the most historic Jewish significance. Nor would I ask whether his evident compassion for Palestinians extends to the Jews — the settlers — that would be displaced (for an idea of how this would work out, see the former residents of Gush Katif). These questions are too personal.

After all that has happened since 1993 — the second Intifada, the disaster of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Hamas takeover and the two wars that has spawned, the intransigence of the PLO and its tolerance of terrorism, the continued incitement against Jews and Israel, the abrogation of the Oslo Accords, the radicalization of the Arab world, etc. — why do people like this rabbi continue to repeat the same, old, tired nonsense?

When can we finally put the idea of the “two-state solution” out of its misery?

Why disproportionate response pays

 From Fresno Zionism
 
A bit of video showing Israeli soldiers running from rock-throwing Arabs caused a stir last week. Some Israeli officials suggested that the problem was that rules of engagement were too strict. Others added that ‘activists’ with cameras were prepared to create legal and public-relations problems for Israel in the event that Palestinians were hurt (of course rock-throwing Palestinians were trying to kill the Israelis).

The problem isn’t a legal one and the concern with Israel’s image as a modern, humanitarian state is misplaced. Rather, I would say that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the human animal on the Israeli (and generally, Western) side, a misunderstanding that our enemies exploit to the fullest.

Humans are not motivated very much by logical arguments, and less so by logical arguments about moral issues. The Christian concept of turning the other cheek never got much traction, even among Christians, because it goes strongly against the atavistic gut feelings that actually do motivate us, and which we love to rationalize after the fact.

Imagine a man, even a UN diplomat, in a nice suit with nice hair. Then imagine inside of him a naked prehistoric ancestor. The ancestor doesn’t have concepts like moral reasoning — he is motivated by feelings like hunger and acquisitiveness, fear and hostility toward outsiders, perhaps respect for and fear of stronger members of his own tribe, etc.

Now understand that even the diplomat in the suit is driven by the same forces. The only difference is that he has layers of ‘culture’ and the ability to express himself in abstract language, to argue rationally in order to justify his preexisting feelings. This is a description of almost every modern human.

There is no way a Jewish state (or for that matter, the Jewish people) will ever generate feelings of love or even liking in the world, and not just among Arabs. Even Norwegians will not think to themselves, “it’s admirable that those Jews care about others.” They will respond to the non-rational ethnic hatred that boils inside of them, and rationalize it by talking about ‘stolen Palestinian land’, settlements, ‘international law’, etc.

I’m not going to discuss the roots of these sentiments now, but they are deep and entirely irrational. They can’t be changed by rational argument.

The Arabs understand this, which is why their propaganda includes viscerally racist anti-Jewish components and plenty of burned babies (even if the babies were burned by Syrian bombs). To ice the cake, they mouth words about justice and law, but that only serves to provide a handle for boycotts and UN resolutions. The real force is in the ugly stuff. It’s job is to feed the flames.

Israelis have gut-level motivations too, mostly the motivation to survive. But they seem to think that the best way to change the behavior of the world toward them is to explain, by appealing to actual facts and with logical arguments, that (for example) the IDF is the “most moral army in the world,” that Israel desires peace, and  the way to obtain it is to sit down with our enemies and talk through our differences.

This does not work with Norwegian diplomats, who will always come up with more reasons that Israel is an oppressive colonial power, because the logical arguments are just epiphenomena. The real motivation comes from a lower level, which rational Israeli arguments don’t touch.

And this is even less effective on Palestinian rock-throwers, who see Israeli attempts to not hurt them as simple weakness. If they could hurt us they would, they think, so if they don’t it’s because they can’t. These attacks are meant as much to humiliate IDF soldiers as to hurt them. When they succeed, they are emboldened to throw more rocks, to take even more risks (which have the side effect of demonstrating their manhood).

This is well-understood by Avigdor Lieberman, who said “There is no way that Palestinian policemen can punch and slap soldiers and live to tell about it.”

Lieberman’s statement was undoubtedly greeted with horror by less-astute but supposedly more ‘cultured’ people who find live fire a highly disproportionate response to a punch or slap (or thrown rock).

The fact is that the prehistoric ancestor within us doesn’t respond to proportionality. The way to get him on your side is not to explain how cultured you are, but to show him that if he messes with you he and his relatives will quickly be dead.

So Israel’s carefully measured surgical response to Hamas murder rockets, ending in a negotiated settlement, strengthened Hamas politically and psychologically, even while it destroyed its infrastructure. Infrastructure can be rebuilt and ammunition replenished, so the IDF’s actions achieved only a temporary advantage. Hamas’ victory celebration was not inappropriate, if we are talking about the psychological dimension.

In order to change the political landscape, it’s necessary to change the psychological one. The way to do this is not by careful surgical strikes, defensive strategies, and unbalanced concern for the welfare of those who are trying to kill IDF soldiers. It is by massive, disproportionate response to attacks.

While some are afraid that this would create legal and diplomatic problems, these problems appear anyway based on false and exaggerated ‘evidence’ — see the Goldstone report, for example.
Israel should hit its enemies hard. Deep down, even the Norwegian diplomats will understand.

Who killed the peace process?

From Fresno Zionism
 
December 4th, 2012

The so-called ‘peace process’ was based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and the most serious attempt to implement them on the ground was the Oslo Accords, agreements signed in 1993-95.

Although both sides complained about violations of the Oslo Accords — Israel complained about continued incitement and terrorism, which increased sharply after Arafat’s return from exile in Tunis, and the Palestinians complained that Israel was not withdrawing fast enough — the final nail of Oslo’s coffin was hammered in by Mahmoud Abbas, when he asked the UN to declare ‘Palestine’ a state.

Art. XXXI.7 of the 1995 Interim Agreement says “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations”). This is exactly what Abbas did, and he can’t blame it on unaccountable terrorist factions, as Arafat liked to do after his assassins murdered Jews.

Israelis always understood Oslo as a compromise — that neither side would get everything that it wanted. But the PLO always saw it as a surrender agreement, and became ‘frustrated’ (and everyone knows how Palestinians behave when that happens) when Israel didn’t simply withdraw from all of the territories in return for nothing.

The father of all peace processes was UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called for  Israel to withdraw from territories conquered in 1967, and for

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

Land for peace and secure borders. At first the Arabs wouldn’t even consider an agreement that promised peace (see the “Three No’s“). But more recently, they proposed the “Arab Initiative,” which calls for complete Israeli withdrawal, assumption of guilt, and right of return for Arab refugees (what a deal!).

The decision of the UN General Assembly to grant Palestine non-member state status in all of the territories conquered in 1967 directly contradicts resolution 242 because it gives all of the territories to Palestine, without guaranteeing Israel secure boundaries or peace.

If we go back farther, the GA has also taken back the promise to the Jewish people made by its predecessor, the League of Nations, and embodied in the Palestine Mandate, to encourage “close settlement on the land” by Jews in their historic homeland.

It is interesting that although Israel has made great concessions since 1967 — withdrawing from the Sinai, withdrawing from Gaza, legitimizing the PLO, etc. — the Arab side has taken precisely one step since the Three No’s: it has agreed to talk, and this only because its military initiatives consistently failed.

Of course, General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding, and this one does not have consequences on the ground.

Which brings us to E1. Israel has announced plans to build housing in the area called E1, which is located between eastern Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, 4 miles away. This has stirred up a hornet’s nest in the anti-Israel camp. The NY Times (which accurately reflects the position of the Obama Administration) wrote in an editorial that this

could doom the chances for a two-state solution because building in the E1 area would split the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.

Apparently the Times editorial board does not possess a map of the region or the ability to read one. I can help:

Ma’ale Adumim is one of those communities that were expected to become part of Israel in any negotiated settlement. Not only does it not cut the “West Bank” in half as the Times asserts, but the distance between the eastern part of Ma’ale Adumim and the Jordan is greater than the width of Israel at its narrowest point according to the pre-1967 borders!

So who doomed the “two-state solution?” If you mean a compromise solution in which neither side gets everything it wants, but in which both sides can have peace and security, as envisioned in UNSC 242, then it never had a chance, because this is not what the Arabs mean by the expression. The diplomatic ‘peace process’, worthless though it may have been, died on November 29, 2012 at the hands of Mahmoud Abbas.

Klavan's One-State Solution

   



And here is a short history of Israel's borders and other stuff:

The US and the UN

   

The UN is funded by its members, with the assessments established according to the best principles of the Communist Manifesto: each member is assessed according to their ability to pay. This ability is determined by the size of the GDP, personal income values and other criteria. The budget is confirmed by the General Assembly.

The top contributors to the UN budget are the following countries:
United States 22.0%
Japan 19.5%
Germany 9.8%
France 6.5%
United Kingdom 5.5%
Italy 5.1%
Canada 2.6%
Spain 2.5%
Brazil 2.4%
Mexico 2.3%
(The above numbers change every year. The top 5 countries remain the same.The most current assessment can be found here)

In other words: the current 192 members decide what to do with money contributed mostly by the above 10 members. But wait. It gets better. The percentages quoted above apply only to the UN budget, excluding peacekeeping missions and other organizations and activities. The number quoted by US supporters of the UN is a measly $516 million per year. The actual number is about $6.347 Billion as explained here and it makes the US contribution much higher than the theoretical 22%.

It seems that the United States (a rich country) is borrowing money from China (a poor country) to pay its UN assessments.

So what do we get for the billions we contribute?
Well, we have the veto power of our Security Council membership. But so do Russia and China each paying a fraction of what we do.

I'm not advocating the abandonment of the UN by the US. It won't happen any time soon and definitely not on President Obama's watch. I am advocating that Congress use its control of the purse to exert influence on the General Assembly and other UN bodies.

In 1989 the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) wanted its status upgraded from an observer to a member of the General Assembly. Both Israel and the US objected but it was clear that the Third World countries, who didn't mind welcoming a terrorist organization into the UN, would vote for the resolution in the General Assembly. The then US Secretary of State George Shultz declared that if the Assembly votes for the PLO's membership he will strongly recommend that President George H.W. Bush stops funding the UN. This threat, along with some additional diplomacy was enough to convince the majority to abandon the idea.

The same tactics could work now, probably better since the US pays more of the UN budget than in 1989.

Congress needs to pass a bill cutting off all payments to the UN if the General Assembly recognizes a unilateral bid by the Palestinians to establish a state. It should also cut off funding to UN organizations that act against our interests. One of these is the Committee for Human Rights that is composed of human rights violators like Iran, (Libya was recently expelled), Syria and their like but finds it necessary to perennially condemn Israeli and US human rights violations.

There is no reason for the US to support an international body that is corrupt, acts against us and our allies and supports terrorist states and entities. To wit: we couldn't push through the UN a meaningful sanctions regime against Iran to stop it's nuclear armaments program. The US would probably do much better in the absence of an international body like the UN by organizing its allies and threatening its foes to cooperate. The UN gave Iran's trading partners Russia and China as well as some Europeans a cover for obstructing any organized action and provided a focal point for a semi-organized opposition to any meaningful sanctions.

One of the root problems with the UN General Assembly is democracy. Not that majority rule is always wrong, but most times it turns into mob rule. This is what happened in the UN. If the United States has one vote as does North Korea or Syria the net result is rule by organized blocks: The Organization of Islamic Conference represents 56 countries and they always vote against Israel and in support of their members no matter what these members do. The Durban Human Rights Conference was, as an example, a festival of Antisemitism and pro terrorism. A number of countries, including the US, chose to withdraw from it but why should we fund these racist terrorist feasts?

The same rule applies to dictatorships, of which there many more than democracies. No resolution can be taken or enforced against even the worst of them, like North Korea or Iran, because the others will oppose and defeat such a resolution.

Democracies that have no restraint on the rule of the majority deteriorate and die fairly quickly. After all a lynch mob is the perfect embodiment of democracy and lynch mobs don't survive for very long. The reason modern democracies survive is that either they are not true democracies but actually representative Republics (like the United States) or have a representative Democratic rule (like Israel, Germany France and others). These mechanisms work only if they are build on top of an established culture of political freedom and tolerance.

The UN has neither a representative body nor a culture appropriate for maintaining a representative democracy. A great majority of its members are dictatorships of one sort or another. This is probably the reason why the democratic UN is becoming less and less relevant and why we should stop funding and supporting them

Turncoat Nation!

 

The 1967 borders

 


There may not be a problem with president Obama's statement that the Israel-Palestinian negotiations should start from the 1967 borders. I don't think that this is what the president really meant to say, but inadvertently he made a very pro-Israel statement.

The 1967 war started from the 1948/1949 armistice lines. These were not "borders" but the less permanent and formal armistice lines. Armistice lines are never considered borders as they are established by facts on the ground and not by mutual agreement. The only mutual agreement that preceded these lines was the agreement to stop fighting for a while. To wit: the Arabs invalidated those armistice lines by attacking Israel across them.

The war ended at the current borders. Egypt signed a peace agreement (after badly losing the 1973 war). Therefore establishing a proper border mutually agreed by both parties.

The current western border of Israel is actually a more "formal" border than the 1948 armistice lines ever were: the kingdom of Jordan gave up its claims to the West Bank of the Jordan river (not that Jordan had ever had a legitimate claim to this territory). Jordan's abdication could be made legally only in favor of another sovereign power - Israel. So even though the Jordanian king said that he is giving the territory to the Palestinians, the statement was meaningless since there was no sovereign Palestinian entity to take possession at the time. There is still no such entity and even if it came into existence it would have no rights to any land held by the sovereign state of Israel unless Israel agreed to grant it some rights.

I'm sure that President Obama, being an educated man and a lawyer, meant exactly what he said: the 1967 borders. Which means the borders established AFTER the 1967 war and not the temporary 1948 armistice lines. According to the president it will be up to Israel to decide if it is willing to give anybody sovereignty over a part of that land. I'm sure Israel will be generous but I also don't expect them to grant their land to organizations that proclaim their desire to terminate the state of Israel like both the Fatah and Hamas do.